Richard J. Miller Jr., left, and Sean R. Weissbart

Morris & McVeigh, one of the oldest law firms in New York City, will close its doors, with its managing partner and another of its attorneys taking their tax and estates practices to Blank Rome.

Richard Miller Jr. and Sean Weissbart joined Blank Rome as partners May 6. They said they look forward to offering the firm's broad range of services—in real estate, matrimonial and corporate law, for example—to their clients. Miller said their old firm is voluntary dissolving after some 157 years in business.

“Everyone has to look forward and keep looking forward,” he said. “If you stop looking forward, you don't grow and you don't service clients as well as they can be serviced.”

Miller and Weissbart help wealthy clients in New York and elsewhere with probate, estate and trust administration and planning matters, including gift taxes and cross-border financial issues. While much of their work is confidential, they have been involved in high-profile disputes over the estate of Alicia Corning Clark, a socialite who was purported to have had an affair with John F. Kennedy.

Miller said he and Morris & McVeigh's other equity partner, Macdonald Budd, decided over the past few months that the time had come to dissolve the firm. He said he had come to know several Blank Rome lawyers through his work with the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, including Lawrence Chane, the co-chair of the firm's tax, benefits and private clients group, as well as William Finestone and Peter Valente.

About six lawyers practiced full-time at Morris & McVeigh, Miller and Weissbart said. Macdonald and another attorney plan to start their own firm, while one lawyer has joined a bank as its chief fiduciary counsel and another is joining another firm, Miller said. He added that two non-lawyer staff members had also moved to Blank Rome.

Weissbart said several clients have already come to visit their new offices in Blank Rome's new space at 1271 Avenue of the Americas and were enthusiastic about their move. And Miller praised his new firm's use of technology to connect lawyers across offices and disciplines to better serve clients.

According to its website, Morris & McVeigh's history goes back to 1862, when its main business was managing the real estate interests of a single family in what is now the South Bronx. It grew its business and took on its current name in 1918. In a 2012 press release, the firm celebrated its 150th anniversary and contrasted its own success with the collapse of the megafirm Dewey & LeBoeuf dominating headlines at the time.

Several older law firms are still kicking. Cullen & Dykman says on its website that, founded in 1850, it is “one of the five oldest law firms in New York state.” It's not clear who compiled that ranking, but at least three firms claim on their websites to trace their lineage back further, with Cravath, Swaine & Moore celebrating its bicentennial this year, Emmet, Marvin & Martin going back to 1805 and Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft tracing its roots to 1792.

The oldest firm in the country is Rawle & Henderson, the American Bar Association Journal reported in 2014. It was founded in 1783.